Spoiler pictures in this thread. There are pictures and discussions of areas in the game you might not want to see if you have not played the game yet.

About the game:

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is an action-adventure game for the Wii console and the sixteenth entry in the Legend of Zelda series. A prequel to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the game makes use of the Wii MotionPlus peripheral for sword-fighting, with a revised Wii Remote pointing system used for targeting. The game is currently sold as both a bundle with a golden Wii Remote Plus and as a standalone game, and includes a CD containing orchestrated tracks of iconic music from the franchise.

Large blocky shadows around Link / floor?
Looks like a problem with the DX9 plugin, using the DX11 plugin fixes this. Using a newer revision may also fix this but doing so yields more disadvantages.

Link's sword is invisible
Disable "Cache Display Lists".

The background (depth of field) is all corrupted, blocky and/or jagged looking
This is a known problem with any Dolphin builds after r7719 and before 3.0-223. If you're affected, either use a build which is not in that range or enable "EFB Texture to RAM" (causes slowdowns).

Do I need a sensor bar, since the game is using the Motion+ gyros for motion tracking?
Although not needed, it's recommended as the sensor bar tells the Wiimote which direction is forward so that it can correctly correlate hand movements with sword swings. In other words, it serves as a "real time calibration". Without it, keeping the Motion+ calibration is way harder.

I'll just leave this here so people know that the thread is okay and so that no one comes along and closes it. The game was bought and paid for and was released to many people early, that's on the stores, not the people who bought the game.

When I finally get the game from the shop, I will play it on my Wii. Though, as many other people, I really would like to see a motion plus -> 360 pad implementation, where you can also map the sword swings to buttons. This is probably hell of work and will not come so soon.